"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

December 04, 2008

My biweekly column is up in today's Lakeville Journal (readable here with free registration). You will find it on page 1 below the fold if you have the print edition. The topic was the winter sky, though as readers of this blog know full well, that proved merely an opportunity to branch out and draw in many other thoughts and experiences: A taste:

"Two wanderers are dancing cheek to cheek on these December nights. Perhaps you have seen them stepping out in early evening, low in the sky with sinking Sagittarius. The brighter of the two is luminous Venus, a coy mistress who never lingers long. Her steady partner is Jupiter, holding down this particular patch of the celestial dance floor since the beginning of the year. Venus and Jupiter have made an assignation to renew their tryst in the dark before the dawn, but not until May of 2011. Come the New Year she will be off to other lovers — flirting first in Aquarius — leaving her partner with mad-eyed Mars. "

September 16, 2008

This is Windrock from the air. The photographer has managed almost exactly to capture the full frontage of the property - roughtly 400 ft' - on Buzzards Bay. It runs a mile back into those woods. The advance of that line of houses in the background is what our pending conservation easement with the Town of Wareham and Wareham Land Trust is meant to prevent.

We are going back before October's Town Meeting for a reauthorization of the purchase of our easement using Wareham's Community Preservation Act funds. Stay tuned.

August 30, 2008

Blogging is light this holiday weekend. We are down at Windrock, rusticating in the big house by the sea, and unlike of previous visit we have the place largely to ourselves. There are renters in the little house - the parents of the groom at a wedding being held down the beach on Indian Neck, but the big house is ours and each of we four have found time to carve out for ourselves in various cozy corners to settle down with our favorite Windrock things. For Elias, this means rediscovering the collection of toys, begun when my aunts and uncle were small and carrying on to the present day. For Emily, this means finding the dress up clothes and then settling in with a good book done up like Lady Jane Kropotkin or a pirate chieftain. For Viv, it means having the large kitchen table to spread out her PTO and library plans and enjoy the luxury of space to work.

I go for the bookshelves. I seldom bring something to read with me to Windrock because like all great summer homes the place is teeming with reading material. It is less like the second hand bookshop it was when my grandmother lived here and had all her faculties - there has been a significant purge of utter clutter to get the big house in shape for renters - but still, the "children's room" has books stacked to the ceiling on cases that were extended using boards and bricks, and in "the library" the shelves actually have some rhyme and reason to what they contain.

There is, for instance, most of an entire stack dedicated to field guides and books of the sea. Among those for the flora and fauna of our part of North America are volumes that speak of the travels of family members, like the guide to the Birds of West Africa used in the 1970s by my Uncle Rob when he was collecting samples in Nigeria and Egypt with Yale's Peabody Museum. There is also a tattered, cover-less paperback that I am astounded and delighted survived the last "dumptser weekend" and that has its own story to tell. It was published in a series of standard military books and manuals by the Science Service and Infantry Journal, Washington during World War II and is entitled; "What To Do Aboard a Transport". From the CoPublisher's forward:

(T)here can be few who have not been curious about many of the shipboard sights and activities this book describes. It answers most of the questions that come to the mind of the landsman at sea - questions often not answered before the transport (or other ship) leaves port...At the very least, "What To Do Aboard a Transport" will help speed the slow days of voyage.

My grandfather took it with him to the Pacific and used it to teach himself celestial navigation, a skill he later used to help a navy plane find its way back across the dark Ocean to its island base when it lost the services of its navigator.

The books in this house hold the history of the people who have stayed here and the families who have lived here. My grandparents purchased Windrock together with its contents, and some of these were books. The inside plates of many of the grand old Wyeth illustrated copies of "The Black Arrow" and "Treasure island" bear the names of the various members of the Fish family, the previous owner, and a few even of the Lyman family, the first owner who build the house in the late 19th century. Some have the names of the Boston bookseller, and others reveal their origins as coming from the estates of other branches of the family. A few are very old - 17th century with dry leather bindings - and among the more recent of these sort I found the volume XVII of a year's worth of St Nicholas Magazine, published by The Century for boys and girls in the latter decades of the 1800s. There are thrilling tales of adventure, death at sea and ivory hunting in central Africa - just the thing for eager young minds. One of the authors is a young Theodore Roosevelt, and his piece about buffalo hunting during the twilight of the great herds is illustrated by Frederick Remington.

Adventure stories abound in this house. All the Jack London you can handle, stories of impossible exposure and survival after being torpedoed, stories like "The Sea Adler" about a WWI German wind powered commerce raider, all wait for new eyes to discover them. Most of these books are like those in your local library that are almost never checked out, but unlike your local library's collection these shabby volumes have not been tossed out or sold. They are the soul of the house, the thing that keeps it from becoming a sterile rental that was never a home.

This weekend, instead of blogging I will be casting my eye across their faded spines, eager to see where they take me.

July 13, 2008

Here is the power of place. This group of cousins, perched on the rock by the sea, gathered in the early 1950s. That's my mother third from the left in the back row, with Tigerhawk and Charlottesvillian's father second from the right. More than 55 years later (with one last cousin added and one passed on), these families returned with children and grandchildren in tow. There were too many of us for a group portrait, but there was an effort to take a 1st cousins shot (with some 2nds and 3rds and assorted friends and relations in there, too).

Inclusion and belonging, down through the years at Windrock: Gran's greatest gifts.

July 08, 2008

The grand encampment of Barker and Ogden kith and kin over the 4th of July weekend at Windrock involved so many friends and relations one needed a scorecard to keep track of them all. Fortunately, my cousin John's wife Megan used her graphic design skills to collect and display two family trees with names dates and thumbnail photographs for practically everyone in 5 generations from my maternal great grandparents on down to a baby on the way. Several of us provided the genealogical data and tracked down needed images, but the end result allowed us all to puzzle out such things as who went with whom and what a 2nd cousin once removed looks like.

I took fewer photographs of the festivities than I had intended, or rather I focused on recording certain stages while actively participating in others. I have no pictures of the extraordinary drip castles on the unexpected sand bar revealed by an unusually low tide, nor the swarms of children who helped to construct them or dig quahogs rooted out by searching toes. I did not get pictures of the intergenerational baseball and soccer games that sprang up on the lawn. I had many conversations with wonderful people, and so have no regrets on that score.

"Seagulls sing your hearts away'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play"

There were some things that defied photography, like the phosphorescence that made the still waters glow for midnight swimmers, and the fireworks that erupted up and down the shore on both sides of the bay and behind Great Neck.

No one, I believe, wanted any pictures of the most dramatic and terrifying event of the weekend, when the Angle of Death dipped so near we could feel the beating of its wings. My cousin Colin broke out in hives and soon went into anaphylactic shock in the water where quick heads, sound medical knowledge and other people's EpiPens kept him alive until the EMTs arrived. My cousins John and Margaret happened to be with Colin when he collapsed and pulled him to shore, and they were outwardly shaking (as were we all inwardly) for hours afterward. In our number there were an EMT, a doctor, and the head ER nurse at the local hospital (who as it happens is also Colin's mother). My cousin Jay and my cousin Leila's husband Pete the EMT together had three EpiPens and it took two of these to have any effect. But for them and the grace of God, we would have suffered a terrible tragedy. The next morning when Colin walked toward us like Lazarus with his family as we laid my grandmother's remains in Earth, he was greeted with shining eyes and a round of spontaneous applause. There was even more joy and thanksgiving in the church that Saturday from this largely secular family as we celebrated my Grandmother's life and our personal Passover.

"Oh Lord how they play and play For that happy day, for that happy day"

There are three stones where my grandparents remains reside. One of these is the veteran's stone that acknowledges Grandpop's service in the Pacific during WWII. There is now another paired with it that lists Gran's full name and the Hebrew word "Mizpah", with which she used to close many a letter to loved ones away from home. It may be translated:

"May the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another."

The third stone comes from Windrock itself and is newly etched with her first and maiden names and years of birth and death. It says Barker on another of its faces, and on the top are two words - "Gone Fishing" - which are less irreverent than they seem. My Uncle Rob, when a young boy, learned about the water table in school and decided that when people are buried they could go fishing there. This so tickled my grandfather that he said he would like those words on his tombstone, and this was remembered many decades later and dutifully done.

Those two inscriptions are fitting bookends for these two extraordinary lives, the earthy and the ethereal, and are streams that run deep in all of our veins.

"Oh Lord how they play and play For that happy day, for that happy day"

July 07, 2008

This past weekend, our vast and extended families and lifelong friends gathered at Windrock on the shores of Buzzards Bay to honor the memory of my grandmother and reaffirm our devotion to each other. Someone may have an accurate count, for we managed to feed a legion at least with food to spare, but I am certain we topped 100 on Saturday. It was the sort of event that saw people pitch in at all levels, often seeing gaps and stepping in to fill them, like the elderly college friends of my eldest aunt who helped me fill three hundred baked stuffed clams. There are many, many memories, and I'll write more about the gathering, but for the moment I want to share a few examples of the offerings of love and gifts of tremendous talent that were so evident this weekend.

My Uncle Rob crafted a box for my grandmother's cremated remains out of hemlock and ceder wood from our property. My mother says there never was a tree that Gran didn't like, and these two woods were beautifully paired. When my Grandfather died, Rob also made a lovely box for him, and the night before the internment a group of family members went around adding representative things to its contents - sand from the beach, paint chips from the house - and decided that the most appropriate place for it to remain that night was on the seat of the old antique tractor in the barn. In Gran's case, her box rested on the mantle in the living room with the glorious views of the lawn and bay she so loved in life, with a few representative geraniums standing in for the phalanxes of flowers she habitually stacked several ranked deep before the picture windows. At the graveside there was another red geranium, and a bowl of specially collected jingle shells from the beach that children added at the internment. The sexton at the Agawam Cemetery made the hole with such precision that her box almost touches that of her beloved Bob, who predeceased her 17 years ago

As much as Gran loved flowers and trees, her eyes went joyfully to the skies, following every silver contrail or lingering sunset with fresh delight. She and my Mom shared an unabashed love for birds, from chickadees at the feeder to darting tree swallows out by the garden. Ospreys, though, had even greater meaning. They mate for life, and at Windrock though they never established a nest on the pole erected for that purpose after Grandpop died, they hover and glide on the southwest breeze and our hearts lift with their wild cries. My mother the quilter made this stunning creation of a pair of these marvelous birds and it now hangs in the living room at Windrock. There is the bay, the mound of rocks that form the breakwater, and the bracken and scrub at the edge of the bluff. She has absolutely nailed the birds, and the symbolism of the bird flying homeward into the frame to rejoin its partner so perfectly captures the hope of reunion, in this place for our family and in the next world for my grandparents.

Photographs do little justice to her tremendous talent, but by all means click to enlarge.

This is a family that sings at the least provocation, and my Aunt Happy is always game to accompany a full-throated sing-along as evening shadows fell. The first night, we worked our way through old favorites - The Ship Titanic, The Sloop John B - and new ones, like the Canadian Sea Shanty with blue-wooded call and response my cousin's son Elihu leanred and taught us all:

"Oh, the year was 1778, HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW!A letter of marque came from the king,To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen,

God damn them all!I was told we'd cruise the seas for American goldWe'd fire no guns , shed no tearsNow I'm a broken man on a Halifax pierThe last of Barrett's Privateers."

We are partial to nautical disasters, down-and-out ballads and standards of the American songbook. I myself lead is in a grand version of Rocky Raccoon.

The greatest gifts of all were the gifts of self, the old friends and family both proximate and distant who all made the effort to come together at this extraordinary place to celebrate an extraordinary life that touched us all and abides with us still. Every one of my mother's living cousins on her mother's side and many of their spouses, children and grandchildren came, and the lion's share of those on her father's side. Every one of my first cousins and their families came. My second cousins Tigerhawk and the Charlottesvillian were there, and it was such fun to watch their children and ours - third cousins! -engaged together in play.

In the interest of bilateral relations I happily accepted the proffered Tigerhawk T-shirt (photo credit TH, who took it with his camera phone and e-mailed it to me moments later) and wore it with pride in the knowledge that blood is thicker than water and good people trump partisan politics every time. I cleverly distracted my generally liberal family members with platters of stuffed quahogs, and after all, our dear grandmother was the most independent of Republicans.

Many people worked over many months to get the old place into the best shape it has been in decades for this event. In honor of that effort, inside and out, I took this picture - a view that would have been impossible before my father undertook much clearing of scrub oak and poison ivy. Garden beds were planted, and marigolds ringed the glacial rock in the lawn as had been done by my grandmother in earlier times. This winter and spring saw three bedrooms utterly renovated and the place has never looked better. Long may it remain the land that sustains our souls and draws us back to each other.

June 02, 2008

I had way too much fun finding modern look alikes for our colonial forebears to let it go with just one post. I'm still looking for a 21st-century George Washington - and who isn't - as well as Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson, and if you can find a doppleganger for these icons please pass it on.

Meanwhile, have you ever noticed the resemblance between Don King and Mad Anthony Wayne?

How about Madonna and George III? Or Sam Waterson and Thomas Payne? I'm proud of that one.

May 27, 2008

For more than 2 years, our family has been working to negotiate the sale of a conservation easement (called Conservation Restrictions or CRs in MA and CT) on +/- 19.55 acres of our beloved "Windrock" in Wareham, MA. This is what I do professionally, but this time it is on behalf of my children, parents, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Saving land takes time, and getting agreement on the terms of a CR on behalf of so many when there are two co-holders and a host of reviewers is a tall order. There are many ups and downs and you learn to hold a steady course and respond in a timely fashion to whatever challenge arises.

I don't want to jinx it. But we are now within three weeks of a tentative closing data and we are feverishly working through the conservation transaction punch list. Our family has come together in an extraordinary way to do what is right for the property and honor the love and conservation vision of my grandparents Robert and Athalia Barker, who bought the place more than 61 years ago and wanted it to remain in the family and as intact and unspoilt as possible. Selling this CR allows us to retain title to the entire property and helps ensure that we can maintain it as we have loved it for future generations to enjoy.

We can see the runway and are preparing to land. When it is over and we all can exhale, I'll share the details.

May 21, 2008

Mom is going to her 45th college reunion this weekend. I found this slide from her graduation day in 1963 and scanned it. She and her three sisters all are alumnae of Smith College (classes of '59, '61, '63 and '68).

But it doesn't stop there. My cousin Leila graduated in 1992: a third generation Smith legacy, for our grandmother Athalia (Ogden) Barker was Smith class of '34. Her two sisters Margie and Esther were Smith '28 and '30. Margie, Mom and my aunt Marty shared the same 5 year reunions. The picture of Margie and Marty, below, was taken in June, 1968, the year Marty graduated and also the year she married my Uncle Colin.

There probably should be a Smith weather vane over the family homestead. In 1975 when Smith celebrated its centennial, my cousins and I all got "Smith College: A Century of Women on Top" T-Shirts. Must be why we all turned out so progressive.

April 28, 2008

The Saugatuck River rises in the Danbury Hills and runs for not much more than 20 miles before it reaches Long Island Sound. At its mouth, in present day Westport it is a wide river, but in colonial times there was a bridge a couple miles just upstream where the Old King's Highway crossed the Saugatuck. On the morning of April 28th, 1777, Benedict Arnold and the force which had opposed the British the previous afternoon at Ridgefield raced to hold this crossing and, they supposed, get between Tryon's raiders and their waiting ships and trap them on the wrong side of the river. In this belief Arnold was mistaken, as subsequent events would prove.

Tryon's force marched south on the Ridgefield Road into Wilton, where they took prisoners and looted several houses. Some of the Wilton militia under Lt. Seth Abbott (no relation) were with Arnold and had taken losses at Ridgefield, but others were gathering and more American militia were on the march to intercept the British including Col. Jedediah Huntington and the men who had relinquished Danbury to the invader and were now looking for vengeance.

Word came from area loyalists of a possible ambush being prepared at Wilton Center, so Tryon changed the direction of march and detoured down Old Mill Road and over to Old Danbury Rd. An online article of Wilton history reports;

"At the bridge over Comstock Brook, they found and destroyed 100 barrels of rum, several chests of arms, many cartridges (bullets and powder wrapped in paper), 300 tents, and the forge and bellows of Captain Clapp Raymond, a blacksmith. All of this had been hidden there for safekeeping, as the Americans did not expect the British to take this route. At Captain Raymond’s house (249 Danbury Road, moved to 224 Danbury Road in 2001), they attempted to set fire to his barn, but a Tory neighbor and her Indian slave put out the fire. Raymond later claimed damages of £34 3s. 10d.

Tryon then marched his troops up Dudley Road (Westport Road did not exist at the time), pausing to loot the home of Lieutenant Seth Abbott, to the extent of £55 7s. 3d. in damages."

These were not random acts of looting, but appear to have been targeted against local patriot militia leaders. It is clear that the British benefited from intelligence provided by area Tories, and perhaps from some of the 300 who served in the expedition in the loyalist Prince of Wales American Regiment. Such intelligence would be invaluable to Tryon as his column approached the Saugatuck.

One source claims Colonel Huntington attacked the British column at this point near the ridge of Chestnut Hill, which offered clear views toward the Sound. It also revealed that Arnold's force held the Old Kings Bridge over the river. With enemies gathering behind and the river between them and safety, Tryon was in a tight spot, but again he was served by those with local knowledge who knew of a nearby ford two miles upstream- though crucially, Arnold did not - where today it is even possible to bicycle across the stream. The British detoured again on what is now called RedCoat Rd. and crossed the river unopposed at the modern intersection of Ford and Clinton Rd. Arnold failed to shift his front to intercept and Tryon's column reached the beachhead at Compo Hill, but not for want of trying.

Colonel Hugh Hughes, Deputy Quartermaster of the Continental Army, was present with Arnold at the bridge and left a record of what he saw, quoted in Robert McDevitt's Connecticut Attacked: A British Viewpoint, Tryon's Raid on Danbury (1975):

"As soon as they were within reach of a six-pounder - he [Arnold] ordered a shot to be thrown among them which halted the whole first division, and the second [shot] put them into some disorder as it overset some of them. On which when, the second division came up, it was determined by them to take a left hand road which led over a fording place..."

McDevitt states that General Erskine made a show of force before the bridge, pushing two regiments forward while the rest wheeled to the left and made for the ford. Arnold could not shift to defend the ford without exposing his own flank. The British observed that Arnold attempted to cross the bridge but was not followed by his men. The 4th (King's Own) were left to hold the north side of the bridge while the rest of the British made for the shore, and were pressed so hard by the rebel troops that they were nearly cut off, but in the end they gained the shore.

There was still the challenge of reembarking, and the Americans had been reinforced and now possessed artillery of their own. In addition to a militia company from Fairfield with one cannon, there were four more under Lt. Colonel Eleazer Oswald - Arnold's former aide in his March to Quebec who was captured in the doomed assault of the lower City in December 1775 - now leading two companies of the 2nd Continental (Lamb's) Artillery. Colonel Lamb was also on hand, having ridden 60 miles from Southington when the alarm reached him. Certain DAR Lineage books place my ancestor Thadeus Thompson at Compo Hill with Lamb's Artillery, but I have come to believe this is wishful thinking. Young Thompson (and he was young, born in 1762) did indeed serve under Lamb from Valley Forge to Yorktown where he was maimed by a shell that struck the facines he was carrying, but his enlistment was not until 1778.

The American reinforcements now included 60 horsemen from the 1st Troop of the 3rd Connecticut Cavalry, Colonel Huntington's Danbury force, 3 additional companies from New Haven, and at least one tired rider from Sharon, CT - the previously mentioned and ill-fated Lt. Samuel Lawrence. With these troops and the defenders of Ridgefield, there were perhaps 1,200 Americans to contest the British evacuation at Compo Hill. Anticipating the need for assistance of his own, Tryon send his redoubtable second in command Sir William Erskine ahead of his column to secure the beachhead and some sources (but notably, not McDevitt) claim he brought cannon, sailors and marines from the ships to augment his force on land. McDevitt makes the case that the British held the shore with the force at hand.

On Compo Hill, the British placed four cannon to secure their right flank and defended themselves behind stone walls. It was a strong defensive position and Tryon now outnumbered his attackers three to one, but this did not stop the Americans from attempting to dislodge them. Colonel Lamb rallied those nearest the beach to assault the guns. He rode his horse up to the stone fence in a hail of grape shot and was struck down - it was thought mortally - as he mounted the wall. Lt. Colonel Oswald served his guns admirably in support of this assault and those that followed. Arnold's men kept up a heavy fire and the General had yet another hose shot from under him but emerged without a scratch. Others were not so fortunate. Lt. Elnathan Nichols of the 3rd Connecticut Horse was struck by cannister in the elbow Ebenezer How, Jr. and Benjamen Weed 3rd, both of the Stamford Militia, are listed in the surgeon's records with wounds to the hip and right side respectively after the fight at Compo Hill. Another man, Amos Gray, survived musket balls to the arm and breast, but many others did not. Among the slain was Lt. Elmore of Sharon, who it is reported:

"seeing that his men were disposed to retreat, leaped upon a stone wall and shouted ' for God's sake, men, don't retreat, don't run, let's march up the hill and drive them off.' At that instant he fell shot through the body saying to George Pardee who was near him ' Uncle George I am a dead man' and immediately expired."

Out of ammunition, the British counterattacked with the bayonet. Elements of the 4th, 15th, 23rd and 27th regiments took part in the charge, with Major Stewart and a dozen men reportedly leaping the wall and initiating a general charge by the rest. Whoever initiated it, the charge proved effective and compelled the patriots to withdraw. The embarkation then proceeded without further impediment,, again despite Arnold's efforts to rally the militia to oppose it.

The British losses among those who made the raid were about 150 casualties. The loyalist Prince of Wales American Regiment lost 1 drummer and 6 rank & file killed; 3 officers, 3 sergeants and 11 rank & file wounded; plus 3 rank & file missing. Its commander Montfort Browne was slightly wounded, though Captain Daniel Lyman of the regiment's Light Infantry Company was shot through the body and never fully recovered. The 64th Regiment of Foot had Captain Carter, Ensign Mercer, and eleven men of the 64th wounded.

American casualties are much harder to determine, though estimates range between 100-125 (plus more than 40 captured) and General Wooster and Lt. Colonel Gold slain. The American loss in personal property and war materiel was much greater, culminating in houses burned near the beach as they embarked and including the stores at Danbury, which amounted to 1,700 tents, 4,000 barrels of beef and pork, 1,000 barrels of flour, rice, hospital stores, engineering tools, 5,000 pairs of shoes and stockings, a printing press, rum, molasses, sugar, wheat, and Indian corn.

From a propaganda standpoint, both sides were quick to put their own spin on the affair, but in the beginning the American commander and Congress perceived the British raid as a mistake that they took steps not to repeat by moving depots much further inland. Washington himself did not learn of the raid until the evening of April 30 when he wrote the President of Congress;

"Sir: I have been waiting with much anxiety to hear the result of the expedition against Danbury, which I never was informed of 'till this minute. The inclosed Copy of a Letter from General MacDougall and of Several Others, which he transmitted, will give Congress all the intelligence, I have upon the Subject. I have only to add and to lament, that this Enterprize has been attended but with too much success on the part of the Enemy."

As news of Arnold's heroics reached Congress, it acted to promote him to Major General, prompting Washington to write;

"General Arnolds promotion gives me much pleasure; he has certainly discovered, in every instance where he has had an opportunity, much bravery, activity and enterprize. But what will be done about his Rank? he will not act, most probably, under those he commanded but a few weeks ago."

Indeed, though they also awarded him a horse with all necessary equipment to replace the one lost at Ridgefield, Congress only dated Arnold's commission to that February when he was initially passed over for promotion, the resentment of which festered and contributed to his eventually turning traitor.

The martyred General Wooster was lauded in death as was not always the case in life - his handling of the invading forces in Canada was decried by Congressional observers. The Wooster School in Danbury where I spent the first two years of my life was named for him, and even Phillis Wheatley penned an unpublished poem in his honor:

Accolades and propotions were also forthcoming for Colonel Jedediah Huntington, who later that year commanded a brigade of Connecticut Continentals under Washington, and for Lt. Colonel Oswald, praised for his handling of the guns at Compo and lauded once again in 1778 for his service at Monmouth. As for the militia, their defense of Connecticut during Tryon's Danbury Raid would assume the proportions of myth - their own Lexington and Concord, giving the redcoats "ball for ball." The truth is that the milita and those continental units on hand fought well and were well lead. Not all of them arrived in time to fire on the British but all (save Arnold, who had reason to resent their conduct) had the sense that they had done what was required to see them off. The raid also showed that forces from neighboring states would rally to defend the other. While the British never again penetrated deep into the state, their subsequent coastal raids were probably more a reflection of the lack of suitable inland targets than the need for a quick getaway. Nonetheless, as long as the militia were willing to rise and swarm, though it took the British several more years to fully realize this, the royalists could raid but they could not hold the territory through which they marched.